In stages: learning to act

As poetry is also what the poet leaves out of the poem, so acting is also what the actor decides against.

As far as I am concerned, learning acting is completely unlike learning to write or to ride a bike. Why? When you can write, you can write, well done; and when you can ride a bike, you can ride a bike, no falling off, ‘look Ma, no hands!’

Though acting has a beginning, there is no accompanying end, no ‘one’ thing to accomplish, no staying upright, no test to pass, no mistaking an E for an F. Acting is all process and no event. To be a good actor is to be a piece of tumble-weed rolling through town, latching onto the scrags and the scraps, growing bigger, fatter, before drifting on the breeze, still hungry, ever unsatisfied, across to the next town.

* * * * *

Don’t spend too much time thinking about how to do things.

No great artist does.

They just do things.

Don’t talk to outsiders about what you are going to do. Do it, then talk to them about what you have done.

* * * * *

In terms of the audacity of innocence, of blissful ignorance of social mores, of the fearless desire (fulfilled or otherwise) to love and be loved, we all want to become children again.